Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing technique of communicating with a peripheral apparatus across a network.
Description of the Related Art
As a method by which an information processing apparatus acquires the state of a peripheral apparatus connected across a network, a method in which the information processing apparatus polls the peripheral apparatus is conventionally available. That is, the information processing apparatus periodically transmits an inquiry request packet to the peripheral apparatus, thereby monitoring the state of the peripheral apparatus.
Functions implemented by the information processing apparatus by polling the peripheral apparatus include a push scan service. This push scan service herein mentioned is a function by which a scan instruction is issued by an operation on the peripheral apparatus, and the information processing apparatus detects the scan instruction from the peripheral apparatus by polling, causes the peripheral apparatus to scan an original by issuing a scan start instruction, and acquires the obtained scan data (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-355481).
In this related art, however, polling is continued even when the network connection destination of the information processing apparatus is switched from a network environment to which the peripheral apparatus is connected to another network environment. That is, polling is continued unless a polling stop instruction is issued although there is no peripheral apparatus as a polling target in the network environment. This causes an unnecessary network traffic, or makes the information processing apparatus perform unnecessary processing.